The process of vehicle packaging is an integral part of the vehicle conceptualization and development process, and directly affects decisions relating to vehicle theme selections. During the vehicle packaging process, designers determine how the vehicle components, including occupants, are fitted into the total vehicle space. Downstream design and engineering changes are often coupled with the packaging results.
It is desirable to employ software technologies to automate the tasks and activities of the vehicle packaging process. It is less desirable, however, to employ software applications that only partially automate the packaging tasks, such as with hard coded applications of process knowledge. Such a software application would not, for example, be adapted to notify a user of potential changes in non-target dimensions based on a required change in the target dimension. Nor would such a software application be adapted to allow a user to express a preference whether to allow a potentially altered spatial dimension to change, and to comply with the expressed preference in an adaptive fashion when altering one or more non-target dimensions in compliance with SAE standards.
The hard coded vehicle package design software would suffer from being unable to adapt to frequent design and engineering changes in an automated fashion. For example, when a user changes the distance from a driver's hip to the driver's heel (H To HeelVertical), the distance between the driver's hip and a first rear passenger's hip (Couple Driver-1st) might automatically change in accordance with SAE standards, while the distance from the first rear passenger's hip to the first rear passenger's heel (1st H To HeelVertical) could remain the same. With the hard coded process, the user would not be able to select to hold the Couple driver-1st constant, while allowing the 1stH to HeelVertical to change. As a result, a user who wished to frequently change the 1st H To HeelVertical in accordance with a change in the H To HeelVertical, while maintaining the Couple Driver-1st at a constant value in accordance with SAE standards, would have to repeatedly enter new values for both the H To HeelVertical and the 1st H To HeelVertical. This problem would be compounded when combined with a circumstance in which a user wished to frequently change up to 12 dimensions in accordance with SAE standards. The need remains, therefore, for a vehicle package design system and method that is able to adapt to frequent design and engineering changes in an automated fashion. The present invention fulfills this need.